I leave feedback immediately on payment, which is the completion of the buyers obligation. I feel it's up to me to earn the positive feedback after that through quick shipment, accurate descriptions, quality products and exceptional customer service. Yeah you get the occasional douchebag, but it has worked for me 1628 times. Only one negative....still yet to be posted.

As a seller, I understand why, but as a buyer, I hate that approach and I'm more likely to leave a really bland comment.

I had been leaving feedback either immediately or after a few days. In most cases the buyer would then never leave feedback and I'd never hear from them again. Pisses me off, so now they don't get feedback unless I do.

My biggest spending buyers are all three from Germany. I haven't had any issues...knock on wood...

They shouldn't be able to bid if you do not offer international shipping....but I strongly recommend that you DO offer it. Almost 35% of my sales are overseas.

Thanks, I do offer it to international, just prefer to have bidders contact me before hand so I can make sure they understand what shipping they'll be offered and at what rates and stuff. Have had a few buyers flake on shoes especially when they saw shipping would be $45-50, even though I clearly had that stated in my auction and told them to contact me beforehand...

Well, you will get non paying bidders from all over the world...most of mine come from the US. I bump my international handling fee up a bit to trigger shipping cost questions from serious bidders. Once they contact me about that I give them a more accurate shipping quote. It seems to work, but there is no way to weed out all of the nonpaying bidders....new ones born every day around the world.

Speaking of which, can you/do you require auto payment on auction items? I've had 3 nonpayers. in probably 200+ transactions. 2 Last week! All three have been international.

As far as I know you can only require immediate payment for BIN listings. I give the buyer 10 days to pay. Ebay automatically send the invoice at the end of the auction. Then they send a reminder after two days of nonpayment. I resend the invoiceon the 4th day. On the 6th day I open an unpaid case, and send a friendly email telling the buyer not to worry, they still have 4 days left to pay, and that they should pay or contact me if they need more time to pay to avoid any further action. On the 10th day, I close the case. People are busy these days, most aren't sitting by the computer all day like us. With this "constant reminder" method, I have had far fewer non payments.

Haha, I figured as much Spoo. these two assholes didn't even respond to any of my numerous messages... I guess 1.5% nonpayment is pretty good, but it still pissed me off.

My rate has gone up dramatically in the last month or so. Dunno why.

Anywho, continuing the saga with the lost package: Dude sent me pics today. Tyvek was useless, Whole package was soaked and the thing is furry now. He's returning it for a refund (not that I blame him). I will have it cleaned and Oxy soak it (what the fark do I have to lose?). I also plan to hammer both USPS and UCSF mailroom until someone owns up to leaving it out in the rain for 3 weeks. But, as I said before, Priority is no longer insured by default, so I suspect I'm SOL here.

My rate has gone up dramatically in the last month or so. Dunno why.
Anywho, continuing the saga with the lost package: Dude sent me pics today. Tyvek was useless, Whole package was soaked and the thing is furry now. He's returning it for a refund (not that I blame him). I will have it cleaned and Oxy soak it (what the fark do I have to lose?). I also plan to hammer both USPS and UCSF mailroom until someone owns up to leaving it out in the rain for 3 weeks. But, as I said before, Priority is no longer insured by default, so I suspect I'm SOL here.

Even more annoying, when someone makes and offer on a BIN item.... then dosnt pay. It's not like you bid on it a week ago and won but forgot, you just made a damn offer like an hour ago.

PS - Welcome back Top Rate Seller statues Got to wait to the 20th though for my cycle to refresh.

On the other side of this, I hate it when I make an best offer and the seller accepts it. I don't get any sort of notification to my ebay inbox. I have gone 3 or 4 days before with out realizing I won something...even when they accepted it right away. The emails are sent to my regular email box, which is already flooded by ebay and SF emails.